"It's as if whoever made the update did so without ever actually using the product to, you know, read something. Reader is a product built to consume information, quickly. We designed it to be very good at that one thing. G+ is an experience built around browsing (similar to Facebook) and socializing. Taking the UI paradigm for G+ and mashing it onto Reader without any apparent regard for the underlying function is awful and it shows," says Brian.

One of Brian's complaints is that it's a lot more difficult to share a post in the new interface. Instead of clicking "Share" or using a keyboard shortcut, you now have to click "+1", then click "Share on Google+", select your audience and then click the "Share" button. There's also a privacy downside: +1's are public, even if you only want to share a post with one or two people.

Fortunately, there's a way to share a post without first clicking +1, but it's not obvious. Just use the "share" box from Google's navigation bar.